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This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist John Littlejohn. Enjoy!

"In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."

-- Mark Twain

News and Opinion

We’re Expected To Remember October 7 But Never Ask Questions About It

The Israeli press are reporting that police documents on the security for the October 7 2023 Nova music festival were mysteriously deleted at some point in early January 2024. The Jerusalem Post reports that “it is unknown who removed them and whether copies still exist.”

A new article from the Israeli outlet YNet reports that the IDF had planned to kill an Israeli soldier who was captured by Hamas in 2006, with one document stating “Hannibal in effect.” The Hannibal Directive is an Israeli military protocol ensuring that extreme measures be taken to prevent Israelis from capture by Palestinian resistance groups, even if it means killing the Israelis.

Israel’s Channel 12 has shown footage of Israeli officers demanding that the Hannibal Directive be implemented on October 7 to prevent hostages from being taken by Hamas, with a senior officer saying “(Strike) Gaza. Break it all apart. Along with the soldiers who got abducted.”

Nine minutes of testimonies from both Israeli soldiers and civilians explaining how the IDF killed their own people on October 7. pic.twitter.com/SMZgYbMb8R

— Middle Eastern Affairs (@OpsHQs) June 25, 2026

Many Israeli soldiers and civilians are on record saying that Israeli forces fired upon their own people on October 7.

How many of the 1,195 people killed in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood were actually killed by Israeli forces? We don’t know, and we’re not allowed to know. Electronic Intifada’s Asa Winstanley has argued that the number was in the hundreds.

Did Israel deliberately leave its people undefended from an impending Hamas attack in order to advance pre-existing agendas? We don’t know, and we’re not allowed to know, but there are mountains of evidence indicating that they did.

Ask why there’s been so much violence in the middle east these last three years and you’ll be told it’s because of October 7.

Ask why October 7 happened and you’ll be called an antisemite.

Ask what specifically transpired on that day and you’ll be called a conspiracy theorist.

It’s just so crazy how often apologists for Israel and the western empire will cite October 7 as the spark that set off all these wars of far-reaching consequence, but it’s taboo to talk about exactly what happened on that day, and it’s taboo to talk about how Israel’s abuses provoked the attack.

The official mainstream position on October 7 is that Hamas killed 1,195 Israelis for no reason other than because they are evil and wanted to kill Jews, and that anyone who suggests it may have happened for actual material reasons is an antisemitic monster. Whenever anyone spouts the official mainstream position on October 7 at me I just want to make “goo goo ga ga” baby noises at them until they shut up and go away, because such people are not thinking like adults.

Everyone who’s been watching Israel’s behavior since October 7 now understands why Palestinian resistance fighters carried out October 7 in the first place. We’re expected to avert our eyes from the glaring plot holes in the official narrative and never suggest that Israel’s horrific abuses of the Palestinians may have played some role in giving rise to the attack, but after watching a live-streamed genocide month after month after horrifying month, we all know October 7 was just Israel reaping what it sowed.

And we know there is no evil these freaks are not capable of.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : The Greater Israel Project Is Collapsing

Escalating US-Iran strikes threaten interim peace agreement

A new round of escalating strikes between Iran and the US has continued, further undermining the fragile interim peace agreement between the two countries, and prompting Donald Trump to threaten violence that would ensure Iran “will no longer exist”. On Sunday, Tehran launched drone and missile attacks against Bahrain and Kuwait after new US strikes on sites in southern Iran, and threatened a “complete halt” to negotiations to end the war. Trump said that a moment might come soon when he abandoned talks and the US would “militarily finish the job”.

The US president posted on social media: “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

Earlier on Sunday, Kuwait, which hosts a major US army base, said it had intercepted two ballistic missiles and that there were no reports of injuries or damage, while Bahrain’s interior ministry said the Iranian strikes had damaged a residential building near the international airport and that no one had been killed. Qatar’s interior ministry ⁠said one Qatari national had been killed and second person injured by shrapnel from “military operations ⁠in the area”. The two were on a boat that went missing on Saturday and was located early on Sunday.

But late on Sunday a US official said both sides had agreed to halt recent hostilities and renew talks on the strait of Hormuz. “Technical talks are slated to continue on all areas of the MOU. Both sides will stand down for now and vessels can move freely,” the official said, referring to the 14-point memorandum of understanding that was ⁠agreed earlier this month and under which the strait would be re-opened for traffic.

Mediators from Qatar and Pakistan successfully brought representatives of Washington and Tehran together in Switzerland earlier this month but have been unable to bridge wide gaps on contentious issues such as the future of the strait of Hormuz, sanctions relief for Tehran, and the future of Iran’s nuclear programme. Under the memorandum of understanding signed earlier this month, the two countries have 60 days to work out the details before signing a final agreement. Leaders in Tehran and Washington face domestic political pressures to avoid a return to conflict and appear committed to a ceasefire for now, despite frequent bellicose rhetoric.

Iran is preparing for round two in the war

‘We Should Go to Court’: Khanna Says Latest US Bombings of Iran a ‘Blatant Violation’ by Trump

Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna on Sunday reiterated his position that new bombings of Iran by the US military over the weekend are a direct violation of a War Powers Resolution passed by Congress earlier this month and said legal action was in the works to challenge the president’s ability to carry on with the unprovoked war he first launched alongside Israel in February.

“These strikes are a blatant violation of the War Powers Resolution that we passed,” Khanna said in a social media post Saturday after Trump acknowledged strikes on numerous Iranian targets. “Trump must stop this war now—or we will take him to court to compel him to do so.”

In a Saturday statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the US had “struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!”

“It is very possible that they will never learn!” the president exclaimed. “There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

The latest direct exchange of hostilities—that began with US bombings of Iranian targets Friday and included Iran targeting US allies in Bahrain and Kuwait on Sunday—come over lingering disagreements about how vessels will or will not pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

“Congress passed the first War Powers Resolution in history, legally compeling an end to war on Iran,” the anti-war group Just Foreign Policy said following Friday’s strikes. “This means Trump’s strikes today are an unprecedented Constitutional violation **Trump must be taken to court** to honor the American people’s demand that we exit this war — NOW.”

Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that “interference in [the Strait], any attempt to establish new or separate arrangements from those currently being carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will only lead to further complications, delay the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, and increase the level of tension.”

Araghchi called for a regional agreement to settle the issue of passage through the Strait, but indicated the US should have no role in determining the outcome of the settlement. On Saturday, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) said that the US—“whose very nature is characterized by breaking commitments and violating agreements”—was guilty of firing on coastal targets but that such attacks would not deter the Iranian military from exerting control over the Strait.

“Henceforth,” said the IRGC, “vessels found to be in violation will be dealt with more firmly than before.”

On June 23, a 50-48 vote in the Senate saw a war powers resolution pass the upper chamber after the House also passed a similar resolution on June 3 to bring an end to the war started by the US and Israel on February 28. But as Khanna explained Sunday, speaking with journalist David Sirota, these votes have not been enough to curb the president’s actions.

NEW: Congress just passed resolutions to block Trump from continuing the Iran War. The resolutions carry the force of law under the text of the 1973 War Powers Act. Now, @RoKhanna tells me he is working to organize lawmakers to bring an historic court case to enforce the law. pic.twitter.com/IBH7dbKcxG

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) June 28, 2026

Asked by Sirota what he would be doing to compel Trump to adhere to the congressional opposition to Trump’s ongoing aggression against Iran, Khanna said, “we should go to court.”

Noting that former Republican Congressman Tom Campbell, back in 1999, had taken former President Bill Clinton to court for violating a War Powers Resolution during the US-backed NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Khanna said he is preparing to follow a similar course.

“This is something that we should try to enforce,” Khanna said. “And I’m working with my colleagues to see how we can get a group to take this case to the courts.”

Larry Johnson : Is Trump's MoU Unraveling?

Iran’s IRGC Says It Targeted Eight US Military Installations in Response to US Attacks

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement on Sunday that its forces targeted eight US military installations in Kuwait and Bahrain in response to US attacks on Iran, as the US and Iranian militaries continue to trade strikes despite the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) meant to end the war.

The flare-up began on Thursday when a drone struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, and the following day, the US bombed several targets on Iran’s coast. The drone attack came after Iran warned ships against transiting through the strait on a route it didn’t approve, as the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) began evacuating ships through the waterway without coordinating with Iran.

After the US bombed Iran on Friday, Vice President JD Vance accused Iran of violating the MoU and said that “violence will be met with violence.” For their part, Iranian officials maintain that the wording of the MoU means Iran is solely responsible for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and that any other arrangements violate the agreement.

“Any interference in this matter and any attempt to adopt new or separate arrangements compared to what is underway by Iran will only lead to more complicated situations and delays in the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and will fuel tensions,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday.

Trump’s Deal BLOWS UP – Iran HITS US Bases & Hormuz EVEN HARDER | Ehsan Safarnejad

Ghalibaf Says Iran Won’t Stop Pushing for Full Israeli Withdrawal from Lebanon

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf reaffirmed on Sunday that Tehran will continue pushing for a full Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon following the signing of a new “framework agreement” between Israel and the Lebanese government.

“Our goal is to end the war in Lebanon, [help] return of refugees to their homes, end the occupation and [secure] withdrawal of the Zionist regime from Lebanese territory,” Ghalibaf told Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in a phone call, according to Iran’s PressTV.

The agreement has been strongly rejected by Hezbollah, which wasn’t involved in the negotiations. Berri, leader of the Amal Movement, a Shia political faction that’s largely aligned with Hezbollah, has also rejected the deal, saying it is “contradictory and impossible to implement” and calling it an “incitement to civil war.”

Venice protest planned for US ambassador’s superyacht visit

Protesters in Venice are planning to disrupt a visit by the billionaire US ambassador to Italy in his 117-metre superyacht, which they fear he plans to dock in the lagoon city. “We ruined the party for Jeff Bezos’s wedding last year – this year let’s ruin the ambassador’s tour!” said Stella Faye, a 28-year-old researcher and activist, at a meeting of about 40 demonstrators on Thursday. In June last year, the ostentatious wedding of the Amazon founder and Lauren Sánchez was disrupted by Venetians protesting against what they saw as the takeover of their city by someone with enough money to do so.

Now the ambassador Tilman Fertitta can expect a similar welcome after it was revealed he plans to visit Venice with his personal superyacht on 17 July as part of a cruise around Italy’s coastline to celebrate ties between Rome and Washington and the 250th anniversary of US independence – a tour he has called “Coastal Diplomacy 250”.

One person suggested, to a round of laughter, “bringing back the crocodiles” – a reference to protesters’ threat last year to fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles, which forced the Bezos-Sánchez wedding reception to change venue at the last minute. Activists fear Fertitta plans to dock in the historical centre of Venice for the Festa del Redentore, one of the city’s most important traditions and arguably its biggest party. Held on the third weekend in July, it celebrates the end of a 16th-century epidemic of bubonic plague that killed more than 50,000 people in just two years (more than the current official resident count of the city).

“Redentore is one of the few occasions that still belongs to the people of Venice,” Faye said. But Venetians could find their view somewhat obstructed this year. Fertitta’s yacht, Boardwalk, is a 32-metre-high, six-deck vessel equipped with two helipads and two swimming pools, reportedly worth $450m. According to the website of Venezia Terminal Passeggeri, which handles yacht mooring requests, the most central spots for a boat his size are off the Punta della Dogana – in front of the Redentore church – or on the Riva dei Sette Martiri, a popular viewing spot for locals.

“The city letting this yacht come to Venice would be a slap in the face for Venetians,” said Giulia Cacopardo, a 29-year-old activist and cultural coordinator. “In a city where quality of life is in tatters because there’s nowhere to live and only precarious jobs, we have billionaires thinking they can do whatever they want. It shows the arrogance of money – coming to a party for citizens that you probably don’t know anything about.”

Putin Rejects Talks Aims For Odessa Says Russia About To Take Donbas Calls For Unity; Drones Abate

‘It’s dangerous and it’s going to erode trust’: redesign of US government websites stokes surveillance fears

An opaque White House office staffed largely by veterans of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has quietly rebuilt some of the federal government’s most sensitive websites – for passport applications, voter registration, prescription-drug pricing and children’s savings – in ways critics say appear to violate federal law. The National Design Studio (NDS) was established by a Donald Trump executive order last August, and is led by Trump-aligned Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and staffed by Doge veterans.

A Guardian investigation has found the office has apparently been developing or redeveloping sensitive federal websites, including those connecting Americans with prescription drugs, children’s savings accounts, passports and voter registration. The investigation corroborates and advances earlier reporting by the Drey Dossier, a YouTube investigative outlet.

The NDS built and now operates four public federal websites: ndstudio.gov, trumprx.gov, realfood.gov and trumpaccounts.gov. All four ran commercial visitor-tracking software, configured to evade the privacy tools many web users install, and none carry the public filings federal privacy law requires under laws including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002. Separately, none of the NDS’s spending or its arrangements with outside vendors appears in USAspending, the federal contracting database, raising questions about how it is funded and overseen.

Separately, the NDS has also built and runs White House-controlled versions of services the US Congress assigned to other federal agencies, including a passport-application portal that bypasses the state department’s existing site, and a copy of voter-registration site vote.gov. Combined, the sites route sensitive interactions Americans have with their government through infrastructure the White House apparently controls, and outside the reporting and accountability systems that normally cover federal agencies.

Analysis of the underlying source code for four of the websites found that on at least two of them, the studio installed a commercial tool called PostHog that closely tracks what every visitor does on the site. Another tool, apparently made in-house, sends user data to a destination that is not visible on the public internet. The studio has also built versions of services legally assigned to other agencies, including a passports website, and a copy of Login.gov, the gateway more than 150 million Americans use to sign in to federal services, the latter reportedly being overseen by a former Doge engineer who moved to the studio. [Much more at the link. -js]

Anti-ICE organizers shift focus to defend democracy from Trump assault

When thousands of immigration agents flooded Minnesota earlier this year, a loose network of neighbors sprang into action. They fed each other. They got kids to and from school safely. They tracked the surge that tore through their communities. After organizing, block by block, to monitor Donald Trump’s extraordinary crackdown on their state, the same neighbors are shifting their focus to a different threat. What if the US president tries to steal an election?

Defending democracy can feel abstract – almost theoretical – until it is required. But a controversial, aggressive and deadly deployment of federal agents felt like a distant prospect on the streets of Minnesota, too, until the president ordered Operation Metro Surge.

With November’s midterm elections approaching, one of the groups that taught Minnesotans to document immigration enforcement has now launched democracy defense trainings, encouraging people to knock on every neighbor’s door to help them vote and, if need be, respond to attacks on the election. “There is a general, very visceral concern that this administration is planning to ensure that the elections go their way by any means necessary,” said Jess, who trained about 2,500 people on constitutional observation across dozens of lessons during the immigration crackdown.

Defending democracy, aside from voting, is often seen as the work of elections officials who count and confirm vote totals, or of nonprofits that file lawsuits over restrictive voting laws. Officials in some states have worked to put laws in place to try to fend off federal overreach. They’re beefing up election security measures and solidifying processes to inform the public of how elections work, anticipating misinformation coming from the White House, like it did in California’s recent primaries.

US homeland security secretary tells migrants to seek permanent status or leave

Migrants in the US on temporary protected status should seek permanent residence or leave, Markwayne Mullin, Homeland Security secretary, said in the wake of last week’s supreme court decision that stripped humanitarian protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants. The remarks to CNN’s State of the Union program comes after a decision ⁠that could allow Donald Trump’s administration to deport Haitian and Syrian immigrants to home countries plagued by conflict and ​destitution.

“Either try to fill ‌out the paperwork and ‌be here underneath a permanent status or we’ll help you get ‌back to your country,” Mullin said. “We’ll actually give you a plane ticket, plus roughly $2,100 to help you re-establish when you get there, but temporary protective status, according to the courts and in its name itself, is not permanent status,” he added. Federal law allows ‌the administration to grant temporary legal residency in the United States to people fleeing war, disaster or other conditions.

The ​status had previously been renewed successively and, despite the move to end these protections, the state department currently warns against traveling to either Haiti or Syria, citing widespread violence, crime, terrorism and kidnapping. The United States ⁠first provided temporary protected status (TPS) to Haitians after a devastating earthquake in ​2010, and ​to Syrians after their country descended ​into civil war in 2012.

Thursday’s supreme court decision is set to affect an estimated 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian immigrants who now face Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention or deportation as protections end. Haitian TPS holders and advocates have widely condemned the ruling, warning that it will disrupt the lives of thousands who have been living and working in the US for decades.

Republicans have also been critical of the supreme court decision. Mike DeWine, Ohio’s governor, called Thursday’s ruling a “mistake”. “The situation in Haiti could hardly be much worse. The violent gangs run most of the country. The government barely functions,” said DeWine in a statement on Thursday. “And the economy is in shambles.” Other Republican congressmen, including Mike Lawler of New York and Don Bacon of Nebraska, have criticized Thursday’s ruling and argued for TPS extensions for Haitian immigrants.

Loser Dems Sign PATHETIC "Promise" To Defeat "Socialism"

Zohran Mamdani says he and allies he endorsed carry a ‘national message’

Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, said on Sunday that he and a slew of democratic socialist allies who prevailed in recent primary elections are carrying a “national message” to struggling working Americans hungry for a new kind of politics “coast to coast”.

Mamdani made that triumphant clarion call on ABC News’s This Week just five days after he had seen his endorsed candidates win Democratic nominations in three races for New York congressional seats, as well as for five state legislature positions in Albany. He made no effort to disguise his delight that his clean sweep marks a dramatic shift in Democratic politics – not just in New York City, which he has led since January, but also across the US. He said that collectively they were carrying a “New Deal understanding” of Democratic politics to Congress and on to the “national stage”. It spoke, he said, to Americans feeling exhaustion at struggling to make ends meet “every single day”.

"We don’t have to nationalize that message,” Mamdani remarked. “That is a national message – it’s a national crisis.” Mamdani’s clear framing of last Tuesday’s victories as a political jolt of nationwide significance poses a challenge to the established leadership of the Democratic party of the sort that they fear most. It is one thing for the mayor of New York to confine his brand of democratic socialism to America’s largest and wealthiest city. It is quite another when he injects it into Washington.

Established Democrats, branding themselves as “moderates” and Mamdani as “extremist”, have not held back from attacking his burgeoning political movement. Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, predicted: “The effort to nationalize New York is going to fail. What’s happening in New York will be really irrelevant by the time of the [midterm] elections in November.” Fifteen self-labelled “moderate” Democrats in the US House signed an open letter that, though it did not mention Mamdani or his endorsed allies, was clearly targeted at them. “We are capitalist, not socialist,” they said. “We are mainstream, not extreme. We are proud, not ashamed, of America.”

Asked by This Week what he thought of his critics putting out a manifesto against him, Mamdani joked: “Sounds pretty socialist to me.” He added: “I’m not interested in writing a manifesto, or frankly, in reading one. I’m interested in delivering.” Part of the danger that Mamdani represents to establishment Democrats is that he can now substantiate his argument that the party must deliver more to working Americans by pointing to his own concrete achievements. Mamdani also unleashed piercing criticism of the established leadership of his party. “What we’ve seen over many years is a willingness to not only explain away the status quo, but frankly, even to look to benefit from the status quo,” he said. “And that’s not what working people are looking for from our party.” He charged the party hierarchy of failing to present a positive vision, and for thinking that merely attacking Donald Trump was enough.

Pod Save SCOLDS DAC For PROTESTING Genoc*de TOO SOON (ft. EXCLUSIVE 10/8 Rally Footage!)

Zohran LAUGHS at Crying Moderates, Secures Rent Freeze VICTORY

Appeals court rejects Trump EPA bid to abandon rule restricting deadly soot pollution

A federal appeals court on Friday rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to abandon a Biden-era rule that sets tough standards for deadly soot pollution. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel is a setback for the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda and its repeated efforts to boost coal, a reliable but polluting energy source.

The decision by the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit leaves intact, for now, a tighter standard set in 2024 on pollution from coal-fired power plants, factories and other industrial sources. The EPA under Donald Trump asked the appeals court last year to invalidate the Biden-era rule, arguing that the agency under previous leaders had exceeded its statutory authority and acted unreasonably by failing to consider costs to businesses affected by the rule.

The court denied the Trump administration’s request, saying in a decision written by Judge Douglas Ginsburg that the agency’s arguments “lack merit”. The ruling leaves in place an annual ⁠limit of 9 micrograms of fine particle pollution – often called soot – per cubic meter of air, down from 12 micrograms established more than a decade ago. The EPA rule sets an air quality level that states and counties must achieve in the coming years to reduce particle pollution from power plants, vehicles, industrial sites and wildfires.

The EPA’s bid to walk away from the Biden-era rule came in response to a lawsuit by 25 Republican-led states and a host of business groups that attempted to block the 2024 rule in court. A suit led by attorneys general from Kentucky and West Virginia argued the EPA rule would raise costs for manufacturers, utilities and families and could block new manufacturing plants. The EPA under Biden had said the tighter limits would prevent more than 800,000 ‌cases ⁠of asthma symptoms, 2,000 hospital visits and 4,500 premature deaths.

California’s landmark anti-plastics law sparks anger as 17 states move to sue

A groundbreaking California law that compels packaging producers to phase out single-use plastics is already sparking anger from the chemicals industry and environmental groups just weeks after going into effect. The law, which was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2022 but only took effect in May, requires plastic and packaging companies to use less single-use plastic, and ensure by 2032 that all packaging is either recyclable or compostable. The big idea is to incentivize producers of plastics to consider the end of their products’ life in order to create better, more sustainable bottles, containers and wrappings.

Under the new rules, plastic producers have to cut single-use plastic, increase recycling rates, and pay $5bn to remedy harms from plastic pollution. The science of plastic recycling is not encouraging: only 5-6% of plastic is ever recycled. And despite progress in recent years with local bans on plastic bags and packaging, and producers touting new technologies, experts say that rate is unlikely to change because the low cost of creating new plastic – and the markets for selling recycled plastic have dropped when China and other countries drastically reduced the amount of plastic they would purchase from the US.

But industry groups say the law puts an undue burden and financial cost on manufacturers in other states who will still have to comply in order to do business in California. And on Monday, a coalition of 17 states sued in an effort to block the law.

One issue, they say, is that California’s law requires businesses to register and pay fees to a private state-appointed entity called Circular Action Alliance. “No state should limit interstate commerce, let alone delegate the power to set and collect taxes to a third party outside of the scope of public scrutiny,” said Eric Hoplin, president and CEO of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, which joined the lawsuit, said in a statement this week.

Heidi Sanborn, executive director of the National Stewardship Action Council, who negotiated part of the bill, says the question is not whether there is a cost in dealing with plastics at the end of their lifespan. “The question is who pays for it and whether the system is designed to deliver the greatest environmental benefit in the most cost-effective way possible,” she says. She says that currently the cost of managing packaging waste falls largely on local governments, taxpayers, ratepayers and small businesses, while the new law shares that responsibility with the companies that design, market and profit from packaging.

Misery on the way ...

Heatwave and high humidity to blast much of US

A long and dangerous heatwave will blast a large swath of the central and eastern United States for the upcoming week, the National Weather Service (NWS) said on Sunday – with temperatures rising ahead of the Fourth of July holiday and feeling even hotter because of high humidity also arriving.

Already parts of the US, especially Phoenix and central Texas, and much of the south-west were experiencing temperatures of about 100F (38C) on Sunday, while the NWS warned of severe wildfire conditions developing across much of the west as new fires popped up across the region.

On Sunday, more than 130 million Americans across southern and Great Plains states were under moderate to severe heat risk conditions, according to NWS maps, with that area forecast to expand and temperatures to intensify as the week drags on.

Forecasters say several days of high temperatures – some above 100F – will settle in across the lower Great Lakes, the mid-Atlantic and the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. Some record highs could be set in areas from the lower Great Lakes to the mid-Atlantic and New England later in the week, NWS meteorologist Bryan Putnam said.

Feeling the heat will be the east coast cities of New York City, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore, and midwestern and Great Lakes cities including Chicago, Indianapolis, St Louis and Detroit. Southern cities such as Dallas; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Memphis, Tennessee, will also see high temperatures. High heat will last into next weekend across the Great Plains, the south-east and the mid-Atlantic, the NWS said. Temperatures will reach well into the 90s and low 100sF, the NWS said. High humidity will lead to heat indexes of 100-110F, and as high as 115F.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.

The Iran war is the most unpopular major conflict in US history

Iran War: Struggle Over Strait of Hormuz Intensifies as US and Iran Strikes and Counterstrikes Escalate, US Escorts Tankers on Oman Side; Yet More on Oil and Diesel Squeeze

War On Iran: – New Clash Over Strait Passage – Lebanon’s Capitulation Ignites New Civil War

Brief Iran Update

Palestine Action Lawyer Faces Renewed Contempt Proceedings

Unhinged Trump Calls US Progressives Communist ‘Animals’ Who Will ‘Close Your Churches’ and ‘Kill Your People’

A Little Night Music

Johnny Littlejohn – Two Way Street

John Littlejohn – Reelin' And Rockin'

John Littlejohn – Worried Head

John Littlejohn – Kiddeo

John Littlejohn – Driftin' Blues

John Littlejohn & Carey Bell – Mama Told Me

John Littlejohn - How Much More Long

Johnny Littlejohn – Lottery Blues

John Littlejohn – Shake Your Money Maker